iDesk completes the look

Did you like the part about opening Firefox to the Microsoft home page? I thought it a clever touch. Every now and again I pull that desktop out and poke things around a little bit. It’s not very exciting, but I suppose it has its merits. And since this is a rather substantial advance in its development, I should probably make note of the innards.

So just as a review, that’s Arch Linux running IceWM 1.2.37, with the WinClassic2 theme from box-look.org. The default setup that’s included with that file is acceptable, but I’ve listed some adjustments below.

Those three are the most important parts. For a GTK theme, Redmond is probably the closest (thealphanerd is right😉 ). There is the matter of the Tahoma font that you’ll have to “acquire” from somewhere, but if you combine those two, most of the interface is set. Volwheel is my favorite when it comes to a volume indicator for the system tray; not only is it reminiscent of the volume control in Windows, but you can use the icon in the WinClassic2 theme as well as others, depending on your preference.

That background color is #3A6EA5, which may or may not be the exact shade of a blank background. I prefer that to the default Bliss wallpaper, although you can download by following the Wikipedia links to this page, if you think it better.

iDesk is what completes the look though. I had left icons out for a long time, mostly because I wasn’t really interested in them. But now that they’re in place I have to admit, they really pull the desktop together. The idesk-extras package contains an idesktool utility, so you don’t have to hand-edit configuration files, if you’re not into that. Three out of those four came from the GnomeXP pack; the Firefox one comes from … Firefox, of course.😐 I’m much happier now that Firefox will follow the GTK theme and font size, without manhandling it.

Xfe does a great job pretending to be Explorer, if you subtract a couple of the menus and turn the theme to the Windows lookalike. I had to tweak the interface color a tiny bit, or the shade was a little bit off. Otherwise, add the Tahoma themes in that too, and it looks remarkably like the Windows version. Sort of.

I think that’s it. Change the icon set in .gtkrc.mine, and I suppose if you’re really daring, you could change the bash prompt to pretend to be the Windows command prompt. I can’t be bothered with that though. That’s way too much effort.

I hate to sound like a newbie, but the additional downloads – where do you place them for IceWM to pick them up?

I guessed the WinClassic2 in the ~/.icewm/themes/ directory from the adjustments that you made, but where do the other ones go (including the ttf please!)?

When I’ve tried to duplicate your success, I’ve ended up with the window borders being super chunky and the minimise, maximise and close buttons are corrupted, no windows-esque look to the start bar, and I have no idea about idesk with the My Computer icons – it’s just a blank blue…

Oh, and the “Command Prompt” window… the TERM is set to Command Prompt in the .Xdefaults? Are you sure? I get complaints about “Command” not being a valid term when trying to run anything that requires the term info.

Well, let’s see. The themes go in respective directories inside .icons, so the GnomeXP folder will be at ~/.icons/GnomeXP. Same for the cursor theme.

Redmond is usually a GTK style that comes with the default GTK engines; if it’s not there check your distro for a gtk-engines package, or something similar to that.

rxvt-unicode has a title flag that lets you change the title of the window without changing the TERM variable, because yes, changing TERM to “Command Prompt” makes it unhappy.😉 Try this instead:

urxvt -icon /path/to/.icons/MS-DOS_icon.png -title MS-DOS

You can get an MS-DOS icon off Wikipedia. Change PS1 with

PS1='C:${PWD//\//\\\}>'

And it might be a little more usable, but still look like the old Windows prompt. If it works for you, thank Peter, since he e-mailed me with it a long time ago and I am lazy and forgot to add it to this page.😳